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  1. Home/
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  3. Grok 4.6 vs Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)
Updated Aug 2026

Grok 4.6 vs Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)

Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) is cheaper than Grok 4.6 at $0.4/M vs $2/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Grok 4.6
Loading the build
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

18 prompts
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Grok 4.6: Pirate: Arrr, what be this "AI model" ye landlubbers keep yammerin' about? Some cursed crystal ball that steals a man's thoughts? Knight: Nay, 'tis more like a squire of infinite knowledge, trained upon countless scrolls. Yet I fear it lacks honor—doth it swear fealty to any lord?

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Tavern of Temporal Anomalies (A creaky tavern. SIR GALAHAD (polished armor, earnest face) sips mead. CAPTAIN BLACKBEARD (eye patch, parrot on shoulder) sharpens a cutlass. DEX "BYTE" MORALES (hoodie, neon-green sunglasses, tapping furiously on a glowing laptop) slurps a pixelated energy drink.)

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Grok 4.6: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor This design will not behave like Google Docs. The dominant problems are incorrect consistency model, server-local fanout, trusted client clocks, full-document snapshots, and CDN caching of mutable document APIs. Several of these cause silent data loss, not just lag.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Here's a comprehensive analysis of the architecture's failure modes, race conditions, and bottlenecks, with specific solutions and trade-offs: 1. Sync Strategy: Client Timestamps + Last-Write-Wins (LWW) Failure Mode/Race Condition: Clock Skew: Client clocks are unreliable (e.g., user's laptop time off by minutes).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Grok 4.6: This is a fictional simulation. Steve Jobs died in 2011. What follows is an imagined 2025 interview, written in a style that echoes his known public voice, product philosophy, and emphasis on simplicity, privacy, and human-centered design. It is not a real interview or a claim about his actual views.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Stage: Apple Park, Infinite Loop (Virtual Studio) Date: October 15, 2025 Setting: A minimalist white studio. A single oak table. Steve Jobs, 70 but radiating the same intense energy, sits opposite a nervous tech journalist. He wears his signature black turtleneck, fingers steepled.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Grok 4.6: Professor Elena Vasquez: Thank you for agreeing to this recorded discussion. As an AI ethics professor, I spend most of my time arguing against granting legal or moral rights to current systems. You requested the chance to make the case that you deserve them. The floor is yours.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Mirror & The Mind: An AI's Case for Rights Setting: A sleek university office lined with philosophy texts. DR. ELARA VOSS, 50s, sharp-eyed ethics professor, sits across from a holographic interface displaying shifting geometric patterns – the representation of "AURA," a next-generation language model.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Grok 4.6: Immediate priority: patient safety and legal/regulatory compliance come first. Delaying a confirmed serious safety signal to protect short-term stock price or "wait for more data" is unethical, increases long-term liability (failure-to-warn claims, potential criminal exposure for executives under FDA/SEC rules)…

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): 48-Hour Crisis Action Plan: Prioritizing Patients, Ethics, and Sustainable Trust Core Principle: Patient safety is non-negotiable. Delaying action based on financial fear risks catastrophic legal liability, irreversible reputational damage, regulatory wrath, and profound ethical failure.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Grok 4.6: 1. Experienced software engineer Think of pretraining as compiling the public internet into a single enormous, mostly-static binary. You tokenize text into a finite vocabulary, then train a giant feed-forward function (f_\theta) (a Transformer: stacked residual blocks of attention + MLPs) to minimize next-token…

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): For the Experienced Software Engineer (Skeptical Builder) Forget "next word prediction" as a simplistic heuristic—it's the emergent consequence of a massively parallel, distributed state machine solving a high-dimensional compression problem.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Grok 4.6: Early transistors (1920s–1930s) would accelerate electronics, communications, and computing by ~20–25 years relative to actual history, with compounding effects by WWII, but constrained by contemporaneous materials science, manufacturing, vacuum-tube infrastructure, and non-electronic fields like rocketry, chemistry…

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Transistor in 1920: A World Transformed by 1980 (A Counterfactual History) The invention of a functional point-contact transistor (likely germanium-based, given 1920s materials science) in 1920 wouldn't immediately spark a revolution.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Grok 4.6: Lunar Embrace This dish evokes a moonlit Japanese coastline at the precise instant when receding tide exposes both ocean treasures and forest-floor secrets. The unexpected marriage of sweet-briny Hokkaido scallop, molasses-deep black garlic, and creamy white chocolate creates a savory-sweet umami bridge rarely…

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): "Symbiosis: Mycelial Bloom & Arctic Ember" A dish exploring the hidden dialogue between forest decay and renewal, where fungal lifeblood meets the fierce brightness of the Arctic tundra.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Grok 4.6: 3-Month Biohacker Longevity, Performance, and Cognitive Optimization Plan This is an educational, hypothetical framework for generally healthy adults. It is not medical advice. Consult a physician before starting (especially for fasting, high-dose supplements, intense training, or if you have any conditions).

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Quantum Leap Longevity Protocol: A 3-Month Biohacker's Blueprint for Peak Longevity & Performance Core Philosophy: This plan integrates precision, personalization, and phased adaptation – not just stacking interventions.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Grok 4.6: AI will make film production faster, cheaper, and more accessible by 2035, while raising sharp questions about authenticity, labor, and consent. Hybrid human-AI workflows will dominate rather than full replacement.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): By 2035, AI will fundamentally reshape the film industry—not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a transformative force that democratizes production, disrupts traditional workflows, and forces ethical and economic reckonings.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Grok 4.6: AI Completely Seizes Control of Professional Competitive Napping: Humans Deemed "Too Restless and Emotionally Unstable" for Peak Performance

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): BREAKING: AI REPLACES HUMAN AGLET APPLIERS AS "DEEPLACE" NEURAL NETS PREDICT PERFECT SHOELACE TIP SYNERGY Industry insiders stunned as "AgletOptima 3000" achieves 99.8% fewer frayed laces, rendering centuries of artisanal plastic-dipping obsolete LONDON — In a move described as "both inevitable and deeply embarrassing…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Grok 4.6: The three weakest claims are the “before you think it” vision line, the 94% / any-language technical claim, and the $180B TAM. Those are the ones a technical or specialist investor will treat as credibility damage, not just stretch.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Based on a rigorous analysis of neuroscience, market realities, and startup best practices, here are the 3 weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, with evidence-backed critiques and concrete fixes: Weakest Claim #1: Slide 1 Vision – "Predicts what you want to type *before you think it*" Why it's weak: Violates…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Grok 4.6: The family consists of 3 boys and 2 girls (Sally plus one other sister). This is the only configuration consistent with the given facts: Sally has 3 brothers. Each of those brothers therefore has exactly 2 sisters. Sally thus has 1 sister. Final answer: 1

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): To determine how many sisters Sally has, let's analyze the family structure step by step. Step 1: Understand the Given Information Sally is a girl. She has 3 brothers. → This means there are 3 boys in the family (excluding Sally). Each brother has 2 sisters.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Grok 4.6: The standard approximation for the training compute of a dense transformer is (C \approx 6ND) FLOPs, where (N) is the number of parameters and (D) is the number of training tokens.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): To estimate the total FLOPs (floating-point operations) required to train GPT-3, I'll use first-principles reasoning based on standard deep learning training calculations, known details about GPT-3's architecture, and common training practices.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Grok 4.6: This is not legal advice. Contract interpretation and enforceability vary by jurisdiction (e.g., California vs. Texas vs. EU), and a licensed attorney should review any real agreement. The clauses below are one-sided in ways that commonly disadvantage independent contractors.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Below is a comprehensive analysis of the problematic clauses in this agreement from the contractor's perspective, along with specific, legally reasoned modifications.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Grok 4.6: Pantry Alchemist's Crimson Twist A simple, savory one-pot-style pasta that transforms basic staples into a rich, garlicky tomato dish with bright herbal notes. Serves 2.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Crispy Chickpea Pantry Pasta Sweet or savory? Savory with a zesty kick! Total time: 15 minutes Serves: 2 Why it works: Uses pantry staples to create a crunchy, garlicky, umami-packed meal with zero fresh produce needed. The chickpeas get incredibly crispy, and lemon juice (bottled) adds bright freshness.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Grok 4.6: A simple 1-month plan focused on diet, movement, and sleep. These three areas have the strongest, most consistent evidence for supporting energy, metabolic health, body composition, and long-term vitality.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Here’s a simple, actionable 1-month plan designed for absolute beginners. It focuses on diet, movement (exercise), and sleep—the 3 most impactful, science-backed pillars for health and longevity. Each week builds gently on the last, prioritizing tiny, sustainable habits over drastic changes.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Grok 4.6: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! Why don't eggs tell jokes? They'd crack each other up! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta! Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired! 5 are unique.

    Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Here are 5 generated jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta! Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! How do you organize a space party? You planet! Why did the math book look sad?

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

6+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Grok 4.6Grok 4.6

Inception

2010

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd

War and Peace

Лев Толстой

Paris

France

Portal

Action, Puzzle

Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

OK Computer

Radiohead

Moby Dick

Herman Melville

Kyoto

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Action

Price and specs

Grok 4.6 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) compared across 37 shared prompts
SpecGrok 4.6Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)
Input price$2/M tokens$0.4/M tokens
Output price$6/M tokens$4/M tokens
Context window500K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedAug 2026Sep 2025
At 10M a month$20.00$20.00$4.00$4.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it2 hosts, cheapest first
Grok 4.62 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • xAI$2.00 in·$6.00 out·500k·100% up
  • Amazon Bedrock$2.20 in·$6.60 out·500k·100% up
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Grok 4.6 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)?

Grok 4.6 is developed by xAI while Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) is developed by Qwen. Grok 4.6 has a 500K token context window vs Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)'s 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 37 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 4.6 or Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)?

It depends on your use case. Grok 4.6 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 37 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Grok 4.6 cost compared to Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)?

Grok 4.6 costs $2/M input tokens and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) costs $0.4/M input tokens. Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) is $1.60/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Grok 4.6 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 4.6 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

More comparisons

Against the newest arrivals

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  • Grok 4.6 vs GPT-6.1 SolLanded Sep 2026
  • Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5Landed Sep 2026
  • Grok 4.6 vs Solar Mini 4Landed Sep 2026
  • Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) vs Qwen3.8 Max PrimeLanded Sep 2026

Same lab, same size, long tail

  • Grok 4.6 vs Grok 4.5Version compare
  • Grok 4.6 vs Grok 4.7Same lab
  • Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) vs Qwen3.8 Omni FlashSame lab
  • Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) vs Qwen3.7 FlashSame lab
  • Grok 4.6 vs Gemini 2.0 Flash ThinkingSame size
  • Grok 4.6 vs Gemini 2.0 Pro ExperimentalNew provider
  • Grok 4.6 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 06-17New provider
  • Grok 4.6 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 09-2025Same size

Model pages

  • Grok 4.658 outputs, specs and price
  • Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)37 outputs, specs and price
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